A Good Man

by Guy Vanderhaeghe

  The following winter, famine haunted the Sioux. The children’s swollen bellies were filled with nothing but wind. The women grew gaunt and haggard, the men hollow-eyed with hunger. The babies sucked their fingers and wailed. Old people wrapped themselves in their blankets, lay down to stare into the fire and die. The desperate Sioux began to slaughter their prized horses for meat. The blood of buffalo runners streaked the white plains. Nights, the wolves howled and gulped the crimson snow.

  Walsh gave out all the food he could spare from the Police stores, but it was not enough. At mealtimes, women and children huddled in the cold outside the barracks, waiting for the constables to pass out leftovers. Like dogs, the Sioux fell on the scraps, licked the tin plates clean of bacon grease. When spring arrived they were reduced to snaring gophers, robbing eggs from birds’ nests, and boiling soup from the hooves of the butchered horses that littered the earth when the snow melted.

  Old Tomorrow knew an opportunity when it showed itself. He had no intention of loosening purse strings to feed the Indians that the Americans had foisted on him, Indians that continually aggravated relations with a testy, powerful neighbour. He would take the starvation stick in his hand and beat them back across the border with it. The Sioux needed to understand two things very clearly: the Canadian government would never provide them with rations and it would never grant them a reservation.

  Walsh was not the man to carry out this hard-faced, hard-fisted policy. After all, he had taken it upon himself to hand out food to the Sioux without government authorization. In a report submitted to Macdonald, he had the temerity to praise the stoicism and restraint the Indians had displayed during the winter of famine. The Major was far too sympathetic to the Indians’ plight. Some whispered he was going native. It was no secret he had fathered a child with a Blackfoot woman. There was talk of a harem of Sioux concubines; the most notable and beautiful, White Tooth, was a niece of the Sioux chief Little Saulteaux. Walsh, it was said, had more in common with a Turkish pasha than he did with a married officer and gentleman.

  Some NWMP officers, such as Lief Crozier and Acheson Irvine, complained that Walsh was asserting a monopoly on Sitting Bull so he could prance and preen in the public eye. Fame had gone to his head. By the next year a story was making the rounds that he planned to exhibit Sitting Bull in fairs and carnivals all over Eastern Canada, to line his own pockets by parading his pet Indian.

  Eventually, Macdonald decided it was time to sever the umbilical cord between Walsh and Sitting Bull. The Major was ordered to the Fort Qu’Appelle detachment, two hundred miles east of Wood Mountain, far enough, it was hoped, to make it impossible for him to exert any influence on the chief. But before leaving Wood Mountain, Walsh pledged to Sitting Bull that he would request permission from Ottawa to speak to the President of the United States on behalf of the Sioux people. He would bargain for better terms. If the President would not give them, Walsh said he would petition the Grandmother to give the Sioux a reservation in Canada. He gave one last caution to Sitting Bull before departing. He told his friend he must make no decision about returning to the United States before he heard from him.

  When Police visitors to the Sioux camps reported to Ottawa that Walsh had made promises to assist the Indians, Old Tomorrow concluded the Major’s behaviour was incorrigible. Once again the loose cannon was careering around the deck, wreaking havoc, smashing carefully laid plans to splinters, cutting the legs out from under the captain of the ship. It was time to lash Walsh in place. He was recalled East where he could do no more damage, plunked down in his own parlour to stare out the window at a sleepy town.

  With Walsh exiled, the newly appointed commissioner of the NWMP, Lieutenant Colonel Irvine, and the man who had taken over the Major’s command at Fort Walsh, Lief Crozier, went to work. They paid Sitting Bull no deference or respect. Instead, they turned their attention to lesser chiefs, hammering home the point that if the Sioux wanted food and land they would get them only by returning to the States. Their children would waste away to nothing in Canada if their fathers did not take them south.

  One by one, hunger gnawed loose the chiefs’ allegiances to Sitting Bull. The exodus to the States began. Spotted Eagle was the first to go. Rain in the Face, who had painted himself as a skeleton and danced so defiantly before General Terry, saw the flesh melting off his people’s bones and took them across the Medicine Line. The ferocious Gall, who had lost two wives and three children at the Little Bighorn, and bitterly hated the Long Knives, crossed the Milk River with Crow King to surrender to the Americans. At the last minute, when they had second thoughts about laying down their arms, Major Ilges, newly transferred to Fort Keogh, turned artillery on their village and shelled them into submission.

  The only chief Crozier and Irvine could make no headway with was Sitting Bull. He still placed all his faith and hope in Long Lance; he was waiting for his friend to come back from his parley with the President. The Americans sent Fish Allison, an Army scout fluent in Lakota, to try to cajole Sitting Bull into striking his colours. But Bull would not listen. Over and over, he repeated he could do nothing until he talked to Major Walsh; he needed to open his heart to Long Lance. Then, on April 28, 1881, Bull suddenly struck out from where the Sioux were camped at Willow Bunch, bound for Fort Qu’Appelle. With him went thirty-eight lodges of his poverty-stricken people.

  But Long Lance was not at Fort Qu’Appelle as Bull had thought. The chief was stunned. No one could tell him when the Major was returning or even if he would ever return. The Sioux made camp there where a pitifully few ducks and fish taken from the lake scarcely dulled their hunger. The mission priest accepted a couple of skinny, played-out nags as payment for flour. Each dawn, Sitting Bull stood on the shore of the lake, praying to the One Above, and peering into the mist as if he expected Long Lance to emerge from the grey vapours rising from the cold waters.

  At last, the Sioux turned wearily back, retraced the two-hundred-mile journey to Willow Bunch. When he arrived at his encampment, Sitting Bull received another hard blow. Many more of his band had gone over the Medicine Line, among them his dearest daughter, Many Horses. Of the thousands of Sioux who had come to Canada, all that remained loyal to him now were a few hundred, many of them old and ailing.

  By July, all hope was exhausted. Sitting Bull led his people over the Medicine Line and turned himself in at Fort Buford. He handed his fine Winchester carbine to his five-year-old son, Crow Foot, to surrender to Major Brotherton because he could not bear to do it himself.

  The ring was finally snapped in the bull’s nose. Nine days after the surrender, the Sioux chieftain and his people were loaded on a river steamer and sent off down the Missouri.

  The arrival of the General Sherman in the growing, newly prospering town of Bismarck could not have been better timed. July 31 was a Sunday. Church services had ended, affording the godly the same opportunity to line the bank of the Missouri as the waddies, the saloon-haunters, the bummers, the wharf rats, and the paisley-vested bottom dealers of the gaming rooms. They stood squinting into the blazing sunshine as the steamer’s paddles churned the silty water, its stubby prow laying a creamy furrow down the river, its funnels scattering smoke and cinders into a pale blue sky.

  As the river steamer drew nearer the levee, loosing shrill blasts from its whistle, anticipation mounted. Reporters licked pencil points and passed around a flask of brandy, priming the journalistic pump; a welcoming committee of dignitaries adjusted their hats, pulled cuffs, fingered watch fobs, and prepared sober, official faces. The rowdies began to roil, prompting mothers to gather their chicks to their skirts to keep them from being sucked down into a whirlpool of swirling riffraff.

  The steamer edged to the dock; mooring lines were cast and secured, a gangplank rattled into place. Ashore, hats were lifted and waved. The deckhands surged to the gunwales and returned the salute. There was much neck-craning and bobbing on tiptoes, a bit of sporadic cheering and a smattering of handclapping, as if the audience was u
rging Sitting Bull to bound on stage and commence the afternoon’s entertainment.

  In a few minutes, captive Indians began to appear on deck and the restive crowd quieted. In the hush, Sioux began to shuffle down the gangplank, throwing worried glances at the mob. Every onlooker was speculating on which of them was Sitting Bull. The Indians had put on their best articles of clothing, buckskin leggings with richly quill-worked and beaded cloth strips, war shirts, eagle-bone breastplates, plumed headdresses; some had draped themselves in the Hudson’s Bay blanketthey had acquired in Canada. All the spectators were eager for their first glimpse of Sitting Bull, but they had no way of identifying him; no photograph of the Sioux chieftain had ever been taken. Everyone assumed that Bull, given his position, would cut the most impressive figure. But in the midst of this display of finery, it was difficult to decide exactly who was the most dazzling.

  A member of the fourth estate cried out, “Which of those beauties is the Slightly Recumbent Gentleman Cow?”

  A boatman leaned out over the railing and pointed. “There!”

  Towards the tail of the retinue, a stocky man came limping down the gangplank in an old white shirt, blue pantaloons, and worn moccasins sprinkled with a few seed beads. His braids were wound with strips of red flannel, his shirt was streaked with scarlet, so too was his face, neck, and the part in his hair. Red was the colour of life and charity. A red border painted on the bottom of a Sioux lodge announced that all who visited there would be fed. In the hard times, the hunger times, Sitting Bull had opened his hands to his people and given away most of his worldly possessions to feed and comfort them. His generosity had made him poor. Now he had become the object of charity. The captain of the boat had given him a gift, a pair of smoked goggles, which lent him the black, blank stare of an insect. His gaze unsettled everyone it fell upon; it seemed so terrible, so inhuman that they found themselves averting their eyes from it.

  Nervously, some wag yelled, “I reckon he can’t take the sun shining off all these white faces!”

  The boatman called back, “No, that ain’t it! Old Bull got hisself a bad eye infection! He can’t bear light no more’n a mole can!”

  Once disembarked, the Sioux gathered in a defensive huddle as Bismarck’s first citizens converged on Sitting Bull for a closer inspection. Their interpreter was the Army scout Fish Allison. B.D. Vermilye, personal secretary to the general manager of the Northern Pacific Railway, offered to transport Sitting Bull up from the levee and into the town in the manager’s own private railway car. The Northern Pacific was eager to get as many inches of newspaper coverage as it could milk from the occasion. But Bull’s first encounter with a steam locomotive was not a success. He did not like the hissing sound it made, and opted to ride in an army ambulance to the reception and dinner for officers, principal headmen of the Sioux, and selected invitees from Bismarck that awaited them in town.

  Already, Sitting Bull’s fearsome reputation was waning. He was descending into celebrityhood. At the sumptuous Sheridan House, Allison happened to mention that Sitting Bull could sign his name, a Canadian trader had taught him the trick. As the Sioux sat on the carpeted floor of the hotel lobby, smoking their pipes, Bull was surrounded by men requesting his signature. Paper was waved in his face and pens thrust at him. Stolidly, he signed for all.

  When the autograph session was finished, the Sioux were marshalled and herded to the Merchants Hotel, where a lavish dinner had been prepared with a specially printed menu that guests could carry off as souvenirs. The doorway to the dining room was crammed with gawkers; every window that gave on to the street was filled with faces that peered at the Sioux as they ate their way through a five-course meal. Bull was parcularly taken by something that was as novel to him as a steam locomotive – ice cream. He enjoyed it a great deal more than the great black engine, and worked his way through several bowls of it, questioning his dinner companions as to how this food could be prepared on such a hot day.

  Three hours later the dinner party trooped out into the street and stood blinking owlishly in the yellow glare while the mob that had watched them dine milled around them, trying to purchase trinkets from the Indians. Fish Allison lit a cigar and shot a few contented smoke rings into the air. As he watched them unravel, a bare-headed man in a grey ditto suit emerged from the crowd, came up and spoke to him. After a few minutes’ conversation, the two men shook hands. The Army officers started to shepherd their prisoners back to the steamer. Allison followed at the rear. Wesley Case stood in the street and watched them proceed to the levee.

  The General Sherman was due to depart at seven that evening. It took Fish Allison until five-thirty to persuade the officer in charge of the Sioux to agree to permit a gentleman who had once met Sitting Bull to pay the chief a courtesy call. By the time Allison collected Case, it was nearly six. They went to a small, stiflingly hot portside cabin where Bull was sitting cross-legged on the floor with his young son, Crow Foot. The little boy studied the intruders with childish hostility. Bull did not lift his eyes, but said a few words quietly, tamping tobacco into his pipe.

  Allison translated. “No more autographs.”

  Case moved to a bunk, sat down, leaned forward to dip his head level with Bull’s. Allison shut the door and remained standing, one shoulder propped against it, ready to interpret. Case said to Bull, “Do you remember me?”

  The dark lenses of Bull’s goggles slowly rose and turned a glassy, unreadable stare on Case. Very carefully, he removed them and laid them in his lap, revealing hot red eyes, crusted with mucus. “I remember you. You are Long Lance’s counsellor.” He smiled to himself, a sad, mysterious twist of the lips. “So you have come to see the horse you said should quit running. I have stopped. The Long Knives have put hobbles on my legs. I hope it pleases you.”

  There was no sign of self-pity in the man’s face, just a resigned, half-mocking acceptance of what had befallen him. Case wished that he could speak the Sioux language so he could better convey sincerity when he spoke. He had nothing to rely on but the hope that Sitting Bull would hear conviction in his voice. “No, it does not please me to see how you are treated,” he said.

  Bull received this with a skeptical look. “Then you must have come to make me admit what a wise a man you are. You said that a day would come when Long Lance and I would part ways. That one of us would turn his back on the other. And you were right.”

  Case said, “I have come here for one reason only. To deliver a message to you from Major Walsh.”

  Bull’s eyebrows gave a twitch. He struck a lucifer and sucked the flame into the bowl of his pipe. When the pipe was drawing steadily, he let a long wisp of smoke escape his mouth. He seemed to be readying himself to maintain an implacable silence.

  And when the Major did return from the East, news soon made the rounds in Fort Benton that he had been removed from command at Fort Walsh and placed in charge of a handful of men at Wood Mountain. Could anything have been a more bitter humiliation to Walsh than losing his beloved B Troop to another officer? The star of the man who had showed such brilliant promise at the Kingston School of Cavalry, who had been one of the most admired and gallant officers of the NWMP, was apparently on the wane. Those he had offended by speaking the truth about how the Sioux had been treated punished him by shunting him off to a dreary backwater. Case had no doubt how Walsh would respond to this attempt to teach him a lesson. It was not in the Major’s nature to yield, or even bend.

  Viewing Walsh’s plight from a distance, relieved of the task of trying to temper his belligerent recklessness and prickly pride, Case was forced to concede that, intemperate as the Major was, intemperance fuelled his fierce convictions. Whatever else might be said of him, once he decided his course of action was just, he would not swerve from it, and his failure to swerve kept him mouldering at Wood Mountain, year after year. Then came the final indignity. Case heard that Walsh had been sent to Fort Qu’Appelle, a piddling, insignificant post.

  Not long after that, following y
ears of silence, Case received a letter from the Major. It arrived just days before Sitting Bull formally surrendered to the Americans. In it, Walsh detailed everything that had happened to him in the last few months, excoriating with unbridled fury the stupidity and callousness of his superiors. There was an undertone of sorrow to this anger, the grieving rage of a man impotently beating his head against the bars of a cell. Case found this moving, but also profoundly disturbing. Clearly, Walsh understood that his career in the Police was finished, but could not bring himself to make the admission on the page.

  There was a downcast, humble, self-effacing quality to the letter’s conclusion. Walsh pleaded with Case to go to Sitting Bull and explain that Long Lance had never abandoned him, to say he hoped his friend would believe that he had done all he could to keep his word. Case knew he would do as Walsh asked. He wished to make amends. Years ago he had tried to separate the two men. If a breach had opened between them, now he felt he must attempt a reconciliation.

  Case lifted his face to Sitting Bull. “I hope you will hear what I have come to say,” he said.

  Sitting Bull’s reply was dignified and firm. “Long Lance told me not to give up my pony and my gun to the Long Knives until I got word from him. While I waited, the rest of the Old Woman’s red coats told me, ‘Go. No one wants you here.’ But I shut my ears to them and waited. I waited for Long Lance until I could wait no more. Then I rode to Fort Qu’Appelle to speak with him – but he was not there.”

  “Major Walsh was not at Fort Qu’Appelle because the counsellors of the Grandmother ordered him to travel east. He had no choice but to do as he was told. They are very disappointed in Walsh.”